Labour Items.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 251, 4 September 1902, Page 3

Labour Items.

London, September 1. The Trades Union Congress which is being held in Holborn Town Hall represents a million and a half of workers; Mr W. C. Stedman, secretary of the Barge Builders' Union, is president. The Bishops of London, Rochester and St. Alban* wrote welcoming the Congress. Mr John Burns declared that they had met at a critical time, when the law was inflicting heavy strokes without strict impartiality. The Unionists were determined at all costs to resist the attempts of an unscrupulous plutocracy to deprive them of their right to combination. . . Ten thousand Trade Unionists held a demonstration during .pouring rain in Hyde Park ou Sunday, as a protest against the Hon-c of Lords’ decision in the famous Tafl Vale case. The meeting adopted resolution! reminding the Government that they should legislate to< reserve the _rights threitenad by the Lords’ decision, which rights Parliament meant to confer on Trades Unions. Tho quarrymen employed on Lord Penrhyn’a quarries have ask* d him to accept Mr Balfour or Lord R isebery, or both! as conciliators, with a view of terminating the strike which has so Lng exited. . .

A confeience of trades unionist" at Toynbee Hall favour d legislation to enforce a uniform *ystem of cheap workmens trains m every populous centre, pending natiot alisation of the land and means of transport. The conference also favou ed the scheme of Mr MacNamarn, member of the House of Commons for Camberwell North, for housing the working classes, and the Rating Bill. Rome September 1. Because a local factory dismissed a man 40,000 workers at Florence struck in sympathy. The feeling was bo high that the street lamps were only .lighted under a military escort. New York, September 1. Owing to a dynamite outrage and the difficulty of protecting the free labourers in connection with the Pennsylvania coal strike. General Gobin h«s ordered the troops to fire upon th-- strikers with the least provocation. The losses daring the four months the strike has existed amount to £18,000,000. Coal is Belling at 50s per ton.